infinite zest - 2015-01-11 Yeah, 7:18? I didn't really play a ton of Mario when I was a kid but I don't remember that. Also, without tool assistance was there a way for him to walk backwards like that?

infinite zest - 2015-01-11 Still gets 5 stars because now I know exactly how long it takes to complete SMB when walking, but I think I liked the "lowest score" one a lot more, which amazingly was not tool assisted.

fluffy - 2015-01-11 The thing that weirds me out with the glitch at 7:18 (which is used a few times in the video) is that it somehow puts Mario behind the background elements, which shouldn't be possible. Like, at a hardware level.

infinite zest - 2015-01-11 Yeah, like Nominal said with Bullet Bill, Mario's pretty much walking inside of the bullets. It's been a good decade though since I fired up the old NES emulator though; maybe they do have ones where you can fuck with the rom or the system like you'd circuit bend a synthesizer (or a gameboy.) I think Game Genie kinda worked that way actually.

infinite zest - 2015-01-11 Oh weird.. my internet took a little time out and I figured that last comment wouldn't post. Turns out that Mario's hitboxes were of all sizes, but were all squares, so a bullet-shaped object (or especially the squids in the underwater level) can be touched up until the squares meet. Still doesn't explain the clipping thing.. I knew about the one in 1-2, but maybe by the end of the game we were all too intent on not losing any more lives to find another clipping glitch that really doesn't lead to anything very interesting.

The Mothership - 2015-01-11 Ok, that little trick at the end of world 3-3 was just showboating. And also I don't remember the bug that allowed you to go through the fire chains; is that what we mean by 'tool assisted'?

It seems pointless to me to use cheat codes, especially in speedruns. You're not smarter than the game is sometimes, and you have to deal with that.

The Mothership - 2015-01-11 Aw, I just read the tags and submitter and now I'm sorry I gave only 3 stars.

EvilHomer - 2015-01-12 Fluffy: It's tool-assisted. No "cheat codes", if you want to get technical, but one could argue that the sentiment is the same!

Mothership: "tool-assisted" is nerd slang for "save scummed". Basically, in a tool-assisted speedrun you are allowed to use your emulator in whatever manner you deem fit; reloading each section until you get it 100% right, slowing down hard parts, or even (as has become standard in recent years) slowing the action down so dramatically that you are literally playing the game frame-by-frame. Mario is not just using cheat codes here, it's actually lamer than that: TAS is more or less the paint-by-numbers approach to gaming.

Mind you, some people watch TAS anyway; these videos often dig deep into the game's code, as well as the properties of the platform being used to run and record them, whihc is pretty interesting. They are also a good deal easier to produce than legitimate speedrun videos, since you don't need to have any talent or coordination, just a moderate amount of patience (this is probably why so many people make them). But unless you're a fan of watching machines do all the work, then TAS clips are indeed rather pointless, being utterly devoid of that romantic human element which makes things like GameCenterCX such a joy to watch.

fluffy - 2015-01-12 It's not "paint by numbers" gaming, and I don't think it's really "gaming" at all (it's a different sort of game altogether).

I like TASes because they see what you can exploit in the game by perfectly timing input. It's an art form of its own, and takes a lot of skill and effort. Just not the sorts of things you want to do when you play a game. And it's fine if you don't want to watch this sort of thing, but please don't insult it based on something that it isn't.

Nominal - 2015-01-11 In retrospect I'm taking off 2 stars. These things are only interesting to watch when they show the theoretical "legit" fastest run possible, or punch through the stratosphere with glitches like the original Mega Man.

This is an unsatisfying limbo between the two.

Sexy Duck Cop - 2015-01-12 I've got nothing against posting speed runs, but I have no idea what is special about this video or why I should watch 25 minutes of it.

fluffy - 2015-01-12 Because it goes through the entire game without pressing B.

Some of us are so geezerly that we've never played Mario before; I wasn't detecting anything of interest here beyond the occasional glitch.

I'll still whup all your asses at Omega Race.

Spit Spingola - 2015-01-12 This video was cathartic for me. I didn't realize the B button made him run fast when I first played this as a kid. Found the warp zone but didn't know how to get past the jump in world 8. There was no second button in Donkey Kong or Mario Bros. on my Atari and I am happy this video broke the game and I salute it. I give it five out of five stars.

fluffy - 2015-01-13 I remember when the NES came out, Atari started running a series of print ads for the 2600 (née VCS) talking about how much easier (and therefore better) the Atari was to play because it only had one button, none of this newfangled start/select/A/B nonsense.

I wonder if those advertising execs could have ever predicted today's controllers. The XBox 360 and PS3 ones have two analog sticks, a d-pad, and 13 buttons (including the ones embedded into the sticks), and XBox One and PS4 have even more. And many games use them all, and some even use the d-pad as an additional 4 buttons. It's gotten kind of nuts.